Into the Tomatoverse
Into the Tomatoverse
Into the Tomatoverse
Team
Team
Team
Course
Course
Course
Supervisors
Supervisors
Supervisors
Morgan Bath, Travis Erickson, Pan Xie, Pranav Miglani, & Yining Wang
Morgan Bath, Travis Erickson, Pan Xie, Pranav Miglani, & Yining Wang
Foresight Studio (SFIN-6021), OCAD University, Winter 2024
Foresight Studio (SFIN-6021), OCAD University, Winter 2024
Helen Kerr & Peter Scott
Helen Kerr & Peter Scott
Helen Kerr & Peter Scott
My Role
My Role
Project management lead. Contributed across all foresight methods, led development of the Transform scenario, co-led visualization strategy with Travis, and guided the design of the immersive experience. My horizon scan became the Industry EcoRevolution trend page in the final dossier.
Project management lead. Contributed across all foresight methods, led development of the Transform scenario, co-led visualization strategy with Travis, and guided the design of the immersive experience. My horizon scan became the Industry EcoRevolution trend page in the final dossier.
Project management lead. Contributed across all foresight methods, led development of the Transform scenario, co-led visualization strategy with Travis, and guided the design of the immersive experience. My horizon scan became the Industry EcoRevolution trend page in the final dossier.
The Question
The Question
Tomatoes are among the most consumed crops on earth, and one of the most wasted. We asked what the future of Canadian fresh tomatoes could look like if circular economy principles were embedded rather than performed.
Tomatoes are among the most consumed crops on earth, and one of the most wasted. We asked what the future of Canadian fresh tomatoes could look like if circular economy principles were embedded rather than performed.
Tomatoes are among the most consumed crops on earth, and one of the most wasted. We asked what the future of Canadian fresh tomatoes could look like if circular economy principles were embedded rather than performed.
The Process
The Process
Horizon scanning & Trend Analysis. Each team member ran an independent scan, surfacing signals across social, technological, environmental, values, and political domains. These consolidated into six trends, each documented with signals of change, related trends, implications, and full source references: Reimagine Food, Waste Has Value Too, Grassland Restoration, Redesigning Food, Climate Change and Food Security, and Industry EcoRevolution.
Four worlds. Using Dator's generic images of the future, we built four scenarios (Grow, Collapse, Transform, Discipline) each internally consistent and provocatively plausible. I led Transform.
Depth methods. Causal Layered Analysis for each world, moving from litany through systems and worldview to underlying myth. Backcast timelines from 2024 to 2044, with real 2024 signals threaded into the path. Day-in-a-life narratives anchoring each world in something that feels lived.
Futures artifacts. One per scenario, all children's books. We chose the format because it demands simplicity and storytelling, which forces clarity about what a world actually believes.
Horizon scanning & Trend Analysis. Each team member ran an independent scan, surfacing signals across social, technological, environmental, values, and political domains. These consolidated into six trends, each documented with signals of change, related trends, implications, and full source references: Reimagine Food, Waste Has Value Too, Grassland Restoration, Redesigning Food, Climate Change and Food Security, and Industry EcoRevolution.
Four worlds. Using Dator's generic images of the future, we built four scenarios (Grow, Collapse, Transform, Discipline) each internally consistent and provocatively plausible. I led Transform.
Depth methods. Causal Layered Analysis for each world, moving from litany through systems and worldview to underlying myth. Backcast timelines from 2024 to 2044, with real 2024 signals threaded into the path. Day-in-a-life narratives anchoring each world in something that feels lived.
Futures artifacts. One per scenario, all children's books. We chose the format because it demands simplicity and storytelling, which forces clarity about what a world actually believes.
Horizon scanning & Trend Analysis. Each team member ran an independent scan, surfacing signals across social, technological, environmental, values, and political domains. These consolidated into six trends, each documented with signals of change, related trends, implications, and full source references: Reimagine Food, Waste Has Value Too, Grassland Restoration, Redesigning Food, Climate Change and Food Security, and Industry EcoRevolution.
Four worlds. Using Dator's generic images of the future, we built four scenarios (Grow, Collapse, Transform, Discipline) each internally consistent and provocatively plausible. I led Transform.
Depth methods. Causal Layered Analysis for each world, moving from litany through systems and worldview to underlying myth. Backcast timelines from 2024 to 2044, with real 2024 signals threaded into the path. Day-in-a-life narratives anchoring each world in something that feels lived.
Futures artifacts. One per scenario, all children's books. We chose the format because it demands simplicity and storytelling, which forces clarity about what a world actually believes.
The Immersive Experience
A World at Odds
The Immersive Experience
A World at Odds
The Immersive Experience
A World at Odds
We built out the Discipline world as a live gallery walk. Participants were split into two groups: donors touring a government-sponsored exhibition celebrating a decade of circular economy policy, and protesters preparing to storm it.
The artifacts made the world real: protest signs and resistance flyers, prop tomatoes, New Green Party branding, a government "Green Guardian" certificate, a Figma-prototyped update to the Canada Digital ID app letting citizens report each other's waste violations, and an Artivive AR layer revealing Canada's SDG performance.
We built out the Discipline world as a live gallery walk. Participants were split into two groups: donors touring a government-sponsored exhibition celebrating a decade of circular economy policy, and protesters preparing to storm it.
The artifacts made the world real: protest signs and resistance flyers, prop tomatoes, New Green Party branding, a government "Green Guardian" certificate, a Figma-prototyped update to the Canada Digital ID app letting citizens report each other's waste violations, and an Artivive AR layer revealing Canada's SDG performance.
We built out the Discipline world as a live gallery walk. Participants were split into two groups: donors touring a government-sponsored exhibition celebrating a decade of circular economy policy, and protesters preparing to storm it.
The artifacts made the world real: protest signs and resistance flyers, prop tomatoes, New Green Party branding, a government "Green Guardian" certificate, a Figma-prototyped update to the Canada Digital ID app letting citizens report each other's waste violations, and an Artivive AR layer revealing Canada's SDG performance.
What We Learned
What We Learned
The tools are what held the world together. Staying accountable to a future we had invented turned out to be the hardest part of the project. Knowing what had and hadn't happened became tacit quickly, and almost impossible to convey to each other without pointing back to the backcast timeline or the Causal Layered Analysis. Building the world in excess of what we would ever show gave us something to check ourselves against, and it is what let us craft a reality that was provocative and still believable.
Watching people step into it told us it worked. During the immersive experience, the stakeholder group grew visibly uneasy as the celebration of waste reduction tipped into surveillance and the extreme fining of individuals. In parallel, the protesters grew animated at the idea of reporting their neighbours for growing food in home gardens. That discomfort was the argument. Our research was about the need for participatory approaches to political decision-making, and what happens to a democracy when the people carrying the cost are left out of the decision.
My first full dossier. This was the first formal dossier I had put together, and most of the learning curve was in the details. Understanding what work of this kind actually requires, and how much of it is invisible, was a curve I am grateful for.
Seeing the methods work as a set. It was also the first time I had brought all of these tools together rather than using them one at a time. Watching them shape one another was the thing that made foresight click for me as a practice rather than a toolkit: a CLA insight reshaping a backcast, a day-in-a-life exposing a gap in a worldview we thought we had settled.
Learning constraint. Working as a team of five taught me everyone's contribution style, and taught me when to let go. Holding a standard matters, and so does handing something over and trusting it will come back at the same standard. That balance was the harder half.
Five voices, one document. A large part of my role became review and editing, making five people's work read as a single thing. It sharpened my editorial eye more than any other project I have done.
The tools are what held the world together. Staying accountable to a future we had invented turned out to be the hardest part of the project. Knowing what had and hadn't happened became tacit quickly, and almost impossible to convey to each other without pointing back to the backcast timeline or the Causal Layered Analysis. Building the world in excess of what we would ever show gave us something to check ourselves against, and it is what let us craft a reality that was provocative and still believable.
Watching people step into it told us it worked. During the immersive experience, the stakeholder group grew visibly uneasy as the celebration of waste reduction tipped into surveillance and the extreme fining of individuals. In parallel, the protesters grew animated at the idea of reporting their neighbours for growing food in home gardens. That discomfort was the argument. Our research was about the need for participatory approaches to political decision-making, and what happens to a democracy when the people carrying the cost are left out of the decision.
My first full dossier. This was the first formal dossier I had put together, and most of the learning curve was in the details. Understanding what work of this kind actually requires, and how much of it is invisible, was a curve I am grateful for.
Seeing the methods work as a set. It was also the first time I had brought all of these tools together rather than using them one at a time. Watching them shape one another was the thing that made foresight click for me as a practice rather than a toolkit: a CLA insight reshaping a backcast, a day-in-a-life exposing a gap in a worldview we thought we had settled.
Learning constraint. Working as a team of five taught me everyone's contribution style, and taught me when to let go. Holding a standard matters, and so does handing something over and trusting it will come back at the same standard. That balance was the harder half.
Five voices, one document. A large part of my role became review and editing, making five people's work read as a single thing. It sharpened my editorial eye more than any other project I have done.
The tools are what held the world together. Staying accountable to a future we had invented turned out to be the hardest part of the project. Knowing what had and hadn't happened became tacit quickly, and almost impossible to convey to each other without pointing back to the backcast timeline or the Causal Layered Analysis. Building the world in excess of what we would ever show gave us something to check ourselves against, and it is what let us craft a reality that was provocative and still believable.
Watching people step into it told us it worked. During the immersive experience, the stakeholder group grew visibly uneasy as the celebration of waste reduction tipped into surveillance and the extreme fining of individuals. In parallel, the protesters grew animated at the idea of reporting their neighbours for growing food in home gardens. That discomfort was the argument. Our research was about the need for participatory approaches to political decision-making, and what happens to a democracy when the people carrying the cost are left out of the decision.
My first full dossier. This was the first formal dossier I had put together, and most of the learning curve was in the details. Understanding what work of this kind actually requires, and how much of it is invisible, was a curve I am grateful for.
Seeing the methods work as a set. It was also the first time I had brought all of these tools together rather than using them one at a time. Watching them shape one another was the thing that made foresight click for me as a practice rather than a toolkit: a CLA insight reshaping a backcast, a day-in-a-life exposing a gap in a worldview we thought we had settled.
Learning constraint. Working as a team of five taught me everyone's contribution style, and taught me when to let go. Holding a standard matters, and so does handing something over and trusting it will come back at the same standard. That balance was the harder half.
Five voices, one document. A large part of my role became review and editing, making five people's work read as a single thing. It sharpened my editorial eye more than any other project I have done.
Artifacts
Artifacts
Artifacts
